The Circuit Rider (29 page)

B
ird went to the hotel’s bar, ordered a rye, and asked the bartender if he had copies of the last few days’ worth of newspapers.

The whiskey arrived first, the newspapers second.

Bird scanned the papers until she found the news story she wanted.

The dead girl’s name.

Karen Britt.

And the surviving members of her family, who lived on Abbott Street.

Bird tossed down her drink, paid for it, and walked out of the hotel.

She had gotten the general direction of Abbott Street from the bartender, and now she headed that way.

The whiskey was thoroughly in her system and she felt a pleasant buzz throughout her body.

And something else.

A little nagging sensation that managed to poke through her alcoholic haze with an irritating persistence.

Bird stopped in front of a store that sold candy. The display was a dizzying array of color, with more candy in more shapes and sizes than Bird had ever seen. She quickly turned from the window and glanced behind her. There were a lot of people out and about. A family. Several businessmen. And a woman was walking on the opposite side of the street.

Was there something familiar about her?

Bird turned back and pretended to look at the candy, but instead she watched the woman behind her in the reflection of the shop’s window. The woman had stopped directly across from Bird. She spent some time lighting a cigarette.

Bird turned and walked on ahead.

A tavern was on the corner of the next street.

She ducked inside, went to the bar, and ordered a beer.

Moments later, the woman entered as well and took a seat at a table on the opposite side of the room.

Bird drained her beer and motioned to the bartender for a refill. Once her glass was full again, she went over, pulled a chair out across from the woman, and sat down.

“That seat is reserved for someone,” the woman said, with a furtive glance toward the door.

Bird laughed.

“Yes, it’s reserved for a woman who would be happy to shoot you right now and dump your body in the harbor. Which is why I sat down. This is my chair.”

The woman drank from her beer, and Bird noticed that her hand wasn’t exactly steady.

“Who are you?” Bird said.

The woman looked away from Bird, tried to ignore her.

Bird drew her pistol and set it on the table between them.

“Let’s try that again.”

The woman glanced down at the gun, at the muzzle pointed toward her.

She sighed and seemed to come to a decision.

“My name is Rebecca.”

She hesitated.

“Britt. Rebecca Britt.”

Bird looked at her.

“Karen was my cousin.”

“C
an we talk somewhere else?” Rebecca Britt looked around the saloon. Bird could tell the woman was tired. Her eyes were bloodshot, her skin pale, and she had the harried, unfocused look of someone who had gone a long time without a decent night’s sleep.

Bird went to the bar, ordered a shot of whiskey, drank it, and paid for her beer as well. She went back to the table and gestured for the young woman to follow her.

They walked out together into the cool afternoon air.

“I work about a half mile this way, if you want to walk me back,” the girl said. “I told them I was going to lunch and that I had a doctor’s appointment. I’m already late getting back.”

“I don’t mind a walk,” Bird said. “Especially if you tell me why you were following me.”

They waited at the corner for a horse-drawn streetcar to pass.

“Did you hear about the cable cars?” the young woman asked Bird.

“No.”

“They use a cable under the street. So horses don’t have to pull the things up the hill. It’s going to change the way people move around the city.”

Bird nodded. Interesting, but she could not care less.

“So you were going to tell me why you were following me,” she said. “And what it has to do with your cousin’s murder.”

“I was waiting to talk to Detective Burgoines when I saw you. I figured he would tell me again there was nothing new with the case, so instead I thought I would follow you.”

“So what do you know about Karen’s murder?” Bird said.

“I know that if I had gone with her, I would probably be dead, too.”

“Gone where?”

“It’s a long story,” Rebecca said. “But I think I might know where Karen went that night. I was going to pass it along to the detective, but I left it at the office. That was another reason I decided to follow you instead.”

They turned the corner and went to a building whose exterior was painted green. There were no windows, but one door. The door was painted white. There was no sign out front.

Rebecca used a key to open the door, and she walked through first.

Bird followed her, curious to see what kind of business operated in a building —

The faint sound of a boot on a wooden floor caught Bird’s ear, and then pain exploded from the back of her head. It raced forward, covering her face like a mask.

Her neck went numb, and the numbness spread down the rest of her body as she sank to the ground.

The last thing that went through her mind was that it didn’t hurt to fall on the floor.

It didn’t hurt at all.

T
ower found Silas at the church, in a room just off the altar. He had a paper and pen, probably composing a new sermon.

“Tell me about New Divinities,” Tower said as he walked into the room. Even though he had tried to sound neutral, he recognized that his voice had sounded sharp. Not friendly.

Silas straightened up.

“What are you talking about?”

“New Divinities. Revivals. Supposedly some kind of religious retreat or something that you and Bradley Kirner shopped around to at least one church I know of, and probably a lot of others.”

Silas put the pen down on his paper and looked up at Tower. His eyes were blue, with a hint of fiery reproach in them. “I am telling you the truth, Mr. Tower. I never approached anyone, or any church, about a religious retreat with Bradley Kirner. I have no idea what you are talking about.” The deep baritone voice sounded true to Tower’s ear.

And he had looked directly into the heat of Silas’s eyes.

Tower suspected he was telling the truth. He thought about everything that had happened. About Bird. The carving on her chest. About the pentagrams in Bradley Kirner’s room.

It just didn’t make sense.

When he had been an investigator, Mike Tower had come to believe that cracking a case always came down to making connections. Connecting previously unrelated motivations, events, or relationships.

So he started with what he knew and he went backward. He went back to the beginning.

Because the pentagrams in Bradley Kirner’s room were more than just a shocking sight.

They tied in to Bird’s history with the church.

And with him.

And then Tower felt the connection slam him with a force that let him know he was right.

What if Bird had been hired as his bodyguard for a reason?

What if it had been a part of someone’s plan all along?

Of course!

It meant that the incidents along the trail and here in San Francisco weren’t an accident or a coincidence.

It was all part of someone’s plan.

Which meant that whoever had planned it was here. Now.

And had plans for Bird.

E
ven before she opened her eyes, Bird knew she was in handcuffs.

Her face was pressed against a cold stone floor.

Her arms were pinned behind her back; she could feel the metal cutting into her wrists.

She opened her eyes.

At first, she had the strange idea she was in a church. Because there was an altar. Candles. And a few church benches.

But if it was a church, why was it underground?

Bird rolled onto her back.

It was a stone ceiling.

She wasn’t in a church.

She was in a dungeon.

And she had a vague idea of what the altar was for.

Because above the altar, on the stone ceiling, something was crudely painted with thick black lines.

A pentagram.

Bird closed her eyes.

Stupid
, she thought. She should have known the girl was too good to be true. Bird had imagined some kind of connection because she’d wanted it to be true. She had refused to recognize the warning signs because she’d let her thirst for revenge override her common sense.

And now she was going to pay for it.

Bird tested the strength of the handcuffs.

Nothing doing there. And since she’d been unconscious when they’d been put on, she hadn’t been able to try to manipulate how tightly they were fastened.

Bird pushed herself up to a sitting position and looked around the room. It was a big space, only occupied by the altar, candles, and benches.

And her.

A metal pipe with a metal ring had been driven into the stone wall, and Bird saw the chain that ran from her restraints to the ring. She stood and tried to pull the ring from the wall.

That wouldn’t work.

Bird stood there, refusing to believe there wasn’t some way to get out of this situation.

She ground her teeth together.

It wasn’t just that Toby Raines had gotten her.

No, it was that he had her exactly where he wanted her.

Bird looked up as the girl who had called herself Rebecca Britt walked into the room, carrying a match and glass of wine. She struck the match and lit a few more candles on the altar.

“You’re not Karen’s cousin, are you?” Bird said. Her tongue felt thick. Her voice echoed around the room, making her sound like a ghost.

Bird’s head ached, from both the blow to the back of her skull and the effects of all that liquor she had drunk. Even the good stuff could make you feel like you’d been run over by a train.

“I’ve got nothing to say to you,” the girl said.

Bird laughed.

“No, I don’t suppose you do,” she said. “I think I have it figured out. Someone saw me talking to the police officer about Karen. Maybe you have a spy at the station? Anyway, you found out and followed me with the plan to lure me to that building.”

The girl set the glass of wine on the altar next to the candles. She gave the presentation an appraising glance, then smiled at Bird.

“It’s rude to drink and not offer one to your guest,” Bird said.

The girl smiled and turned toward the door.

“I absolutely can’t wait to celebrate the new year,” the girl said. “We’ve got some big plans. All of them having to do with you.”

She walked to the door.

“The life of the party, that’s me,” Bird called out to her.

The door closed with a
thunk
.

“Shit,” Bird said.